Monthly Archives: February 2015

As I get deeper into crunch time of my mind has had difficulties with remembering to write simple, and to the point arguments. What I have been defaulting to is worrying about the length of it, which leads to a lot of big useless unsupported arguments and statements. Or in other words as Dr Graham calls it a lot of “Hand Waving”. These types of mistakes are what I like to think of as rookie mistakes that I like to avoid after first or second year but when you are under a bit of stress these things happen.

What I need to remember to do is write my arguments in a rhythmic way, similar to a musical composition. This should not obviously be taken in a literal sense. What is meant by this is that I need to remember what the underlying theme of my paper is. The strongest articles or papers do not only continually make more and more arguments to prove a desired point that are not related to one another. Instead, what they always do is revert back to their underlying themes to prove how a certain argument relates to the point that the author is trying to achieve. Dr Graham pointed out to me, is similar to how musical compositions are written, with each verse relating itself back to the chorus.

Therefore, I have to ask myself what are the underlying themes that I am hoping to portray in my thesis? The first and foremost one that comes to mind is why I had a desire to write this thesis in the first place. The main purpose I had in mind when I began this project was to discuss the evolution of the book (mainly its physicality) into a technology that is more and more accessible to all.

This then leads into my secondary theme of how I have struggled with technology throughout my life as a disabled individual, and more specifically a disabled student. This has led me to become entangled with the things around me that help me in my everyday life to become more independent. A number of examples can be made to argue this point, for example every day I depend on my wheelchair to get anywhere. I also depend on my Bluetooth to help me interact with people over the telephone.

When it comes to my working on my passion passion of becoming a historian though, I am even more dependent on technology to scan my books so that I can read them on my computer. What I need to remember to do is always remember these things and keep relating my other arguments back to these underlying themes. If I stick to this strategy I should be good to go.